That is how long it has been since I have signed on and posted anything. Not that I have anything to post. I have been eating pretty bad and I haven’t really exercised.
But that is all changing. Starting at Midnight New Years eve I am ringing in the new year by running a 5K. Last weekend I had my family at my house for Christmas and I overheard my brothers and my SIL talking about doing the First Run downtown Portland. My original plans for new years eve were to take a hot shower, put on my PJ’s and drink a bottle of wine. Maybe buy some shrimp and caramel ice cream and call it a night. So instead I am meeting my family for a run.
I am on my own this year for the first time in 18 years. Maybe 20. My husband and son are in Sunriver which has been tradition for the past 18 years. I broke the mold this year. I wasn’t into it this year. Crowded. Snow. I have had my share of snow this past 2 weeks and ready for clear pavement. So, my daughter and I stayed home. Plus she had to work and since I barely worked last week cause of the snow I am working this week.
I had a great Christmas. Wii fit was one of my gifts. I have gotten on it everyday to weigh and it varies in weight and don’t know how accurate it is. It fluctuates up to 4 pounds between days. And I am not standing naked on it, since it is in the family room.
My SIL have made a pact to lose weight together. And we gave ourselves 9 weeks to lose 11 pounds. We are both at the same starting weight, almost. And want to lose the same amount. Why 9 weeks? Because I have the best mother in the world taking me, my sister and my SIL to Maui for a week. My sister, she is already skinny, so she didn’t need to join our club. I am so excited to go.
I have San Diego in February, Maui and California in March and Las Vegas in April. I have a great first of the year. After that, I need to buckle down and work. A lot of incentive to lose weight this year.
My other great Christmas present was an itouch. Not the iphone. I LOVE it!! I need to find an application that will work for tracking my mileage. Or I am going to have to buy the Nike+ sensor, it already comes with the application on the itouch, Just have to buy the attachment that I will wear.
Something I downloaded is an application that I put what I eat in and it figures how many calories I have consumed and will keep track if I am eating too much or not enough for losing weight. I am bound and determined to win the competition between my SIL and myself.
Here is my resolution right now. To run 3-4 times a week. 2-4 miles each time. At least until the weather gets better. Then up the mileage. Also, to post here more.

That is what I am thinking. I haven’t ran in a week and half and feeling it. I need to get back out there and run, but the weather is not cooperating. Snow and ice are my running enemy. I just saw that my last post was 11-27. I have ran since then.

Will plan on running next chance I get.

I ran 3 miles on Tuesday. Wednesday I ran 3 miles.
Today was a stressful run. To me there are 2 rules to the path with dogs. Clean up their poop and keep them on a leash. I am so tired of pile jumping. Is it really that hard to clean up after your dog. There are bags available at the start of each side of the path. But really got me today was the no leash dog.
I started my run and not 50 feet in I see a lady on a bike with her dog running loose. She has one of those attachments on her bike so she can leash her dog on the back tire and not get tangled up and in her hand is the leash. She is on the bike. Whatever. I figure they will be riding way ahead of me and no problems. Wrong. She was slow and she went around the corner and I couldn’t see her or her dog. Until her dog came crashing out of the woods and right in front of me. So close I almost tripped over the dog. The lady was clear around the corner and I yelled at her to leash her dog. She didn’t even turn around. I was yelling so she could hear me. So I yelled again “Can you leash your dog?” This was her response: I can, but I am not going to. Can you beleive that? Am I crazy, but if someone asks you to leash your dog when your dog should be leashed to begin with, wouldn’t you? She was going so slow on her bike I actually caught up to her and passed her. There were other dogs on the path and she didn’t care.
Ok, I got it off my chest. I can let it go now.

Plan for Thanksgiving is to run when I get up. I get to sleep in tomorrow. Then head to my SIL for dinner. And try and be somewhat good.

It was raining when I first got up, I went back to bed and by the time I was ready to get up it was not raining. I drove down to the path and it was full of parked cars already. I did my scheduled run of 5.5 miles. My knees were really hurting at mile 5. I am really going to have to look at getting knee wraps or maybe go get fitted for shoes. Now that I am working I feel like I can do that.

I went and saw a friend today and she told me that I need to buy smaller jeans cause mine were falling off. But I think I am in that in between stage where the next size down is to tight and I don’t want to go there. Maybe by Christmas.

I went with my youth group (as a leader, of course.) to a progressive dinner. I had so much fun. And ate good. Homemade chicken noodle soup for appetizer, turkey tortellini for main and nothing for dessert. My exercise was doing 3 Chinese fire drills. I ended up driving my car since everyone couldn’t fit on the bus. I had 3 high schoolers in the car with me and they begged me to do them. At the first one I pulled ahead of one of the buses and we did it. The one boy in my car slipped and fell in front of my car. He was fine and we were laughing so hard. Second one we did we were at the end of a driveway in front of another bus and when I got back in the drivers seat I had an extra passenger. The bus behind me did a fire drill too and this girl had gotten in my car. It was so funny. Third time we took off before all the buses and we had to wait for them at the stop sign. We waited out of the car. It was pouring and when they all pulled up we started running around. Good times. The youth group keeps me young.
I was tired and when I got home last night I crashed. My son stayed at a friends house with the promise he would be home sometime between midnight at 4. I told him to text me when he was on his way home. The friend(an adult) was driving him home. He text me at 4:15, he was on his way home. So I got up and unlocked the door at 4:30. Funny thing is my daughter had to get up for work at 5. I had one kid coming home and one kid leaving. Welcome to the teen years. My son had a good time with his friends. He needed a boys night. He didn’t make the basketball team at his school so he was bummed out this week.

Sunday and Monday I am resting my knee. Might go shoe shopping Tuesday night. I get paid that day.

I will have to grin and bear it. It wasn’t that bad. At least that is what I kept telling myself. I got up this morning planning on doing my run right away but it was pouring out. I decided to just go back to bed. Watched 2 episodes of CSI and then got up and ready for work.
On my way home from work it wasn’t raining, hard. So when I got home I put running clothes on and headed out the door. Whoops, it was pouring again. Got the vacuum out and vacuumed downstairs and looked out the window and the rain had stopped. Ran to my car and took off to my path. Raining. Screw it. If I wait for it to stop I will never run. Did my 2.5 miles and I wasn’t the only one on the path. I passed another lady running towards me and we virtual high fived each other. I told her good job for getting out in this rain.
I was soaked when I was done. And of course it had stopped raining. I had to take my jacket off and put it on the floor in the back seat it was so wet.
Went home and took a hot shower. Put my sweats on. I love Thursdays. Survivor and the Office. Can’t get much better. Oh, yes it can. I made apple crisp for dessert. Yummy.
Friday is a rest day. Saturday 5.5 miles. If weather is permitting. Thankfully no set plans on Saturday so I can run anytime.

What do all these have in common? They are going down. The first one not good, but the second two are good.
I had cleaning this morning and I was able to weigh myself. 144. 3.5 pounds less than my last weigh in.
On my way home I went for my run. 3 miles and I was flying high because of the weight loss. I think I did it in 32 minutes.

I am so off on my training that I am tempted to just keep my running at 3 miles each time I run and stay with that. Ok. I won’t. But that is what I feel like sometimes. I think, there is no way I can run further than 3 miles. But I can. Today I ran 2.5 miles. After work.
Sunday I started showing signs of a headache and thought nothing of it. Monday I woke up and it was still there. I went to work and it was still nagging. I took a couple Tylenol and left work 20 minutes early. Went home and straight to bed in my sweats. I was laying there when my cell went off. It was my walking buddy. Do I answer it….I don’t want to walk. I am sick. I just want to lay in bed. Screw it. I answered it. She asked me what I was doing. Me: Nothing. Her: “Can you meet me for a drink? I need to vent”. Me: Give me 5 minutes I will meet you at El Tapatio. Suddenly my headache was gone and off I went(after I changed back in to normal clothes) and met me friend for drinks and chips and salsa.
I paid for it later. I only had one margarita and I don’t know if it was because I already had a headache but by the time I got home I could hardly see straight because my head hurt so bad. I stayed in bed all night and woke up with it in the morning. Thankfully it went away by the time I had to get up and go to the dentist. Don’t even get me started on that trip. I went to work after the dentist. Then did my 2.5 miles after work before it got dark.
Plan is to run 3 miles on Wednesday and 2.5 on Thursday. 5.5 on Saturday. That will be the longest I have ever gone.

I ran 2.25 miles today. Very slow and in pain. My knee is acting up. I gave the knee braces back to my friend who I had borrowed from and so now I guess I need to go by my own.

I went 5 days with no exercise. And I could tell. I missed my 5 mile run. And a 2.5 mile run. Today I got out there and ran 2.75 miles. I was going to go 3 but my leg had a twitch in it. The weather here is going to be getting bad so I have no firm plans to do my runs for the rest of the week. But if weather permits I will do 2.5 Thursday and 3 on Saturday.

Still doing my squats. Crunches not so much.

I must truly be addicted to running now.  I am on this Hal Higdon program for training to run a 10K.  Today it was raining and everything was pointing to no run.  But I did it anyways.  I think I am in week 8 of the training and it seems to be getting easier.  To run 3 miles 6 months ago would have taken me a hour.  Now I was out of the house and Ran and back in 35 minutes.  So it doesn’t take me as long as it used to.  So no excuse of not having enough time.  Plus there is nothing like a hot shower after a good run. 

Loving my new jacket.  I don’t sweat like crazy like I did in the old one.  And it zips off so I don’t have to drag it over my head when I am done running and can barely lift my arms over my head.  The other thing I love about my jacket is that it has a zip toggle that goes around the head versus around the neck.  So it fits more like a cap than a hood. 

I did something to day I have been dying to try.  My size 8 jeans.  I have said this before and I will say it again.  I used to be a size 4.  Not a helathy 4 either.  A sickly 4.  And I have no desire to be that again. Plus I got rid of all my size 4 stuff.  And all my 6 stuff too.  But I kept all my size 8 clothes.  I figured that was more realistic and cost effective.  And I have to say, I am a lot closer to get in those 8’s today than I was 6 months ago.  I got them over my hips, but not buttoned.  I figure by January I could possibly be in them.  That is if I can get past the holiday eating feasts.  But if I keep running it could happen. 

I modified tiny2b’s Old Skool workout and am doing a crunch, squat and lift some weights for each day of the month. So on the 1st I did one of each. Today I will do 5 of each. Tomorrow 6….etc… And then maybe try something different in December. Start small is my motto. I mean I came into this world about 7 pounds.

Looking forward to doing 2 miles tomorrow and then a day of rest. Going to need it seeing that Saturday is 5 miles.